Caravan
by artsybeanpole
Summary: A monster hunter with a golden hair clip and a 1/4 medusa go to join a red-eyed caravan in the city. (It sounds dramatic but basically):I meant for it to be fluff but then Outer Science happened and oh well it's a one shot now AU


A/N: this was supposed to be fluffy, I swear, but my multi chapter AU dreams got crushed because i was like "hey let's start this with imagination forest then end it with outer science" which is what I do 111110% of the time anyway.

It was hardly the right scenario, or the right roles for the fairy tales that littered the medusa's lair.

"Tell me if it's too tight." His golden eyes flitted uncertainly from the hands that were skillfully binding rope around her wrists to the beam painted across the medusa's face.

She waved her legs underneath the chair, as his hands finished with a flourish and a neatly tied ribbon to the last of her bondings. He stretched his legs from their positions, and held out a hand that she readily accepted, hopping down from her seat, rope binding her hands and ankles.

He helped her throw on her hood (she had insisted on pulling up his, though she was 10 inches and 2 hands short to do such a thing), and he closed the door behind her. The tops of the trees dappling their shoulders warm reds and oranges, newly fallen leaves crunching under their boots as he checked her hands and ankles' bonds were satisfactory.

"Warm?" he grinned at her, pulling his hood slightly over his red eyes, and she nodded, assuming the same position, her own red eyes aflame within the yellow colors of fall fluttering around her. She saluted (or at least, attempted to, with 2 hands bound together), and they laughed, leaning against each other to the short walk to the town.

"Keep your head down," he murmured, so close in the crowd that his voice was lost into the top of her head, and all she had to know that he was there was a hand on her back gently urging her forward and the distinctive smell of the monster hunters' clothes mixed with his own aroma.

Eyes were everywhere, and she instinctively let her eyes fall to the ground, watching feet and letting the sounds of the city and the stalls surround her. She bumped into someone's chest, eliciting an angry exclamation, and his hand rested firmer, reassuring, on her back.

"I'm a monster hunter, sir," she could hear her hooded captor with golden eyes roughly try to reason with the irritated passerby in the way that monster hunters often were expected to speak.

She tried to pull her hood down, nervous, and then a large, bristly hand grabbed at her wrist, and she screamed.

Eyes all around turned, and his hands quickly urged her forward through the crowd, his hands pulling his hood further over his eyes, his feet shuffling forward faster than usual.

"We need to leave," he hurried, a small slip of anxiety in his voice, and shoulders bumped against her vision, the suffocating smell of manure and dust coating her skin.

His hands tightened around her shoulders as he maneuvered her into a corner, and he folded her into his chest so her face couldn't be seen, pretending to be two lovers embracing in the stifling summer heat, watching the guards warily checking as the offended passerby angrily explained the situation, his hands waving up and down.

After a while of waiting for her breath to steady, he crouched down, checking her wrists. "Did he hurt you?" He searched her trembling pink eyes, and she shook her head, hastily rubbing her eyes on her shoulder. He stood, rubbing his thumb under her cheekbone, and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "It'll be over soon," he promised, softly, and she nodded, raising her tied wrists to rub away the dust in her eyes.

"Hey, brother," a tall man, taller than even her captor, who, she admitted with a mild flush on her cheeks, was very tall, slapped him on the back, perhaps a little forcefully. His smile was scary too- too wide, too _wild._ He let an amiable smile hang on his lips, but the medusa could feel his hand tense slightly against the small of her back.

"Kuroha," he nodded, and the medusa felt her back stiffen. She tilted her head forward, desperately wanting to escape, but knowing she had to trust him- bodies shuffled past her, heavy with the smell of sweat and liquor as they spoke.

"I got some yesterday, too- those red eyes that they're selling on the market!" The other monster hunter laughed, smacking the heads of the hooded prisoners he held with chains around their necks and wrists. "Like them?"

His smile stiffened, but it flickered back to the relaxed grin from before. "Really? What're the ones you caught?"

"One of them disappear into thin air," he said with almost practiced casualness, and Seto's fingers dug into her back, "and the other," Kuroha's wild smile inched onto his face, as if watching closely for his reaction, "can change from face to face. Crazy, isn't it?"

He smiled, strain collecting between his lips as he forced out a, "Sure is."

The monster hunter twirled a string of hair from the one with green hair idly, and flashed a cold smile towards the captor with the golden eyes. "There was another one," he added, "with some red scarf, claiming she was the leader, but she was in the way." The narrow slits of his eyes watched the monster hunter with the golden eyes' smile straining at the edges, and burst into laughter.

"Isn't it disgusting? These people really think these monsters are worth protecting." He chuckled into his hands, and his pale lips opened into the dark red of his mouth in a stretched smile. "I killed her, you know." The prisoners flinched, and the one with the blond hair's chin trembled as if he were going to cry, but it was swiftly replaced with a still smile.

"Really?" His palm was cold with sweat, and he nudged the medusa's back forward, shaking slightly- _Leave, now. _She didn't move, her boots stuck into the dust swirling around their feet. _Killed...them?_

"Well, you know," he heaved himself off his seat, and his hand reached past the raven head of her lover, and grabbed at her hair behind the hood. She stifled a scream behind closed lips, and the cold palms of his hands pushed her, almost desperately, into the crowd- "Mary, _run!"_ and then there was the flash of that sickening wide smile as he held the barrel of a gun to his head.

"Pretending time's over."


End file.
